


Souvenirs from Earth

by Persiflager



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Nipple Piercings, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-15 00:19:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5764537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflager/pseuds/Persiflager
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronon visits San Francisco and gets his nipples pierced.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Ronon liked Earth just fine. He had a feeling he ought to be impressed by more than pizza delivery and ESPN but he hadn’t been allowed off Atlantis yet and had spent most of his time on the planet so far under the influence of strong medication. He still wasn’t entirely sure which of his recent memories were real and which were drug-induced hallucinations; maybe Woolsey really did train pet fighting lizards in his spare time.

Ronon knew about ESPN because Sheppard had rigged up a TV in the infirmary for Ronon to watch while he was recuperating, and he knew about pizza delivery because the skeleton crew left on Atlantis kept ordering it. On pizza days Ronon swung himself down to the mess on crutches and waited for whichever puddlejumper pilot had been volunteered to return with a stack of hot, greasy pizza boxes. Apart from the mess and infirmary, most of the rooms were empty; even the control room had just one technician on duty at a time, and with the stargate powered down the room was dark and uncomfortably quiet.

The only irritating thing about Earth was that Ronon wasn’t allowed to go into San Francisco by himself, for ‘security’ reasons (“Whose security?” Sheppard had said in his defence. “Because Ronon’s not exactly the chatty type.”). He’d have ignored this and gone anyway once his injuries had healed but the only way to leave Atlantis was by cloaked jumper or Asgard beam. Sheppard was away at Cheyenne, Teyla and Woolsey were busy in Washington, Kanaan was looking after Torren and anyway was subject to the same restrictions as Ronon, and most of the other expedition members he knew were taking advantage of the hiatus to use up some of their accumulated leave and visit their families. 

“No,” said McKay when Ronon finally tracked him down to one of the labs. “Shoo, get out, go away. I’m very busy sorting out the mess Zelenka made of my wormhole drive, and - hey!”

Ronon looked at the tablet he’d plucked from McKay’s hands. “You’re playing solitaire.”

“Oh, excuse me for taking a moment to decompress. I have a very stressful job, and high blood pressure, and frankly it’s a miracle that I haven’t had a nervous breakdown yet, given the ridiculous working conditions under which I regularly _save everyone’s lives_ , so-”

Ronon stopped listening and looked around. Nobody else was in the lab. McKay’s desk was relatively clean, i.e. not currently littered with snack-bar wrappers and empty coffee cups, which meant that he wasn’t working on anything urgent. McKay himself looked even pastier than usual, as if he hadn’t seen fresh air or sunlight recently, and Ronon was pretty sure he’d put on a few pounds.

“It’ll do you good to get out of here for a few hours,” said Ronon when McKay paused for breath. This was how you dealt with McKay - you gave him an excuse he could accept for what he was going to end up doing anyway, because McKay had a conception of himself that was only tangentially related to reality and confronting him with that fact tended to get you stuck for hours listening to his thoughts on The True Nature of Dr Rodney McKay.

(It would have been even quicker to just grab him by the collar and drag him outside, but McKay wasn’t wearing his vest and Ronon wasn’t in the mood to deal with all the bitching if he ripped McKay’s t-shirt.)

“What, are you a doctor now?” 

“Keller would say the same,” said Ronon. “I could call her.”

McKay glared at him for a full thirty seconds before finally sagging in defeat. “You’re not going to go away, are you?”

Ronon just looked at him.

“This is exactly why I never wanted a dog.”

…

Ronon liked San Francisco a lot. He liked the burritos and the trams and the sandwiches and looking at the sea and the little park they found full of dogs and the fact that a lot of people he saw seemed weirder than him.

“That’s because we’re in the Castro,” said McKay. He looked better, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed despite having spent most of the past hour whining about his feet. A small splash of burrito sauce had made a new, colorful stain on his t-shirt.

Ronon looked around. Many of the people around him had tattoos, which he approved of, and were smiling at him, which he didn’t. “They seem friendly.”

“That’s because they want to climb you like a tree. Gay men, in my experience, are just as shallow as straight men, and they’d go for a pretty face and conventionally attractive body over intelligence any day of the week. You’re probably like gay catnip or something.”

McKay sounded aggrieved. Ronon couldn’t work out if that was because he was disappointed or just insulted on principle, but Ronon didn’t really care so he let it go. Plus he was a little insulted by that ‘intelligence’ crack. He decided not to tell McKay about the burrito sauce. 

“I thought you weren’t supposed to tell.”

“No, that only applies to the American military. Yes, it’s ridiculous, don’t ask me to explain because it’s really not my area of expertise and also it’s dumb. Ask Sheppard if you really want to know - I mean ask in general, not ‘ask’ ask in a personal way, though of course you can if you want to, and-”

“I want to get a new tattoo,” said Ronon, because he did.

“Of course you do. If this is some sort of cry for help, I hope you realize I’m peculiarly ill-equipped to respond to it.”

 

..

They wandered into the first tattoo shop Ronon liked the look of, ignoring McKay’s squawks of protest.

“Hey,” Ronon said to the woman behind the counter. She had hair like his, all bound together in a huge ponytail at the back, a small silver nose-ring, and her left arm was covered in one large tattoo from shoulder to wrist, only half colored-in. A sketchbook was open in her lap. “Do we need an appointment?”

“Nah,” she said. “Usually yes, but we should have space in half an hour or so. You cool to wait?”

“Sure.”

Ronon went and sat back down next to McKay, who was still tapping at his phone.

“So,” said McKay. “This place doesn’t have any recently reported health code violations and the reviews are good, but you should know that there’s a more reputable place just over on-”

“I like it here,” said Ronon. He could hear the music drifting out of the back room, something rhythmic and mellow, and the walls were covered with photos of the tattoos and piercings of previous customers. Ronon liked looking at the pictures and not knowing what it had meant to each person to put that on their skin, but knowing that they’d understand why he wanted it. 

A thought occurred to him. “You’re going to have to pay. I don’t have any Earth mon-”

“Ssh!” hissed McKay, flapping his hands at Ronon. “Don’t say that!”

Ronon looked at the woman, who was engrossed in her sketchbook. “Okay.”

“Shouldn’t it be your girlfriend here, funding your bizarre whims for body modification?”

“Amelia’s visiting her family,” said Ronon. “And she’s not my girlfriend.”

“Oh.”

“Not yet,” added Ronon, because McKay had sounded genuinely disappointed. “She said we could go on a date when she got back.”

“That’s great,” said McKay, beaming at him. “That’s really, really great.”

Ronon nodded. Amelia was smart, pretty, and kicked like a mule; he liked all of those things. In the rush of everyone leaving Atlantis she’d come and found him to say goodbye and had said, ‘Let’s go for a drink when I get back’ with cheerful forthrightness. Ronon found that refreshing.

Realising that he’d been silent for too long, Ronon had a horrible moment when he thought McKay was about to take that as his cue to start talking about his relationship with Keller (which Ronon was fine with now but had no desire to hear about) but McKay’s phone beeped with a message that distracted him so Ronon was free to leaf through the design books in peace.

 

..

After they’d waited about twenty minutes, the woman behind the counter put her sketchbook down, came over, introduced herself as Claire and asked Ronon if he knew what he wanted.

The problem was that Ronon had never actually chosen a tattoo before. His had always been given to him by other people - friends, Halling, a shaman who sheltered him for a month while he was running, his commanding officer, and, when he came of age, his grandmother.

What he wanted was to tell the tattoo artist all about himself and let them come up with something, but he wasn’t sure that was the way they did things here. Also McKay would probably have a heart attack.

Ronon looked up at the pictures on the wall again and one caught his eye. It was of a fairly plain chest tattoo, words that Ronon couldn’t read, but what caught his eye was the tiny bar of metal glinting in the middle of the picture.

“I want to get my nipples pierced,” said Ronon.

“Great!” said Claire. “I can do that for you.”

“Now you really will be gay catnip,” said McKay.

…

When Ronon was sitting topless in the chair at the back of the shop, watching Claire conscientiously swab his nipples with a cleaning wipe, he asked McKay about that. “Is it a gay thing here?” 

The useful thing about McKay was that he was a terrible liar – most of the time it didn’t even occur to him to try. Ronon rarely bothered asking him questions about Earth culture because as far as he could tell McKay didn’t fit in any better than he did, but when Ronon wanted to be sure about something he double-checked with McKay then triangulated between someone else’s normal but diplomatic answer and McKay’s clueless but honest one to come up with what he thought was right.

On the whole it was a good system, although Ronon was starting to think he’d made a mistake in picking Sheppard as his ‘normal’ person.

“What?” said McKay. He was standing against the wall with his arms crossed and staring at Ronon’s chest, clearly caught between his natural cowardice and his desire to see what was happening. “How should I know? No, I don’t think it’s a gay thing.” He looked at Claire. “He was home-schooled.”

“It’s kind of a gay thing,” said Claire, carefully marking little dots on either sides of Ronon’s nipples with a felt-tip pen. It tickled. “I mean, there’s definitely overlap, in my experience.”

“There you go, there’s overlap,” said McKay.

Clamping his left nipple in a kind of pincer, Claire squeezed hard, and with a quick dull pain Ronon was pierced. Claire deftly slid a tiny metal bar in place and screwed the end on then covered the whole thing up with a white cotton dressing, which seemed a shame.

“Is Sheppard gay?” asked Ronon as Claire clamped his right nipple with the pincer.

“Doubt it,” said McKay, still staring at Ronon’s chest. He looked kind of green. “He certainly sleeps with a lot of women for a gay guy. On the other hand it would explain the leather-daddy avatar on M4D-058, so maybe? I’ve never asked.”

Claire squeezed the pincer and pierced Ronon’s right nipple. “He could be bi,” she said as she inserted the bar-bell.

“Yes, thank you for your input,” said McKay. “Why do you ask, anyway?”

“No reason,” Ronon said, because saying ‘I think Sheppard kissed me when he thought I was unconscious’ would only lead to McKay getting offended that Sheppard hadn’t kissed _him_.

(It had been a quick, soft kiss on the lips and when Ronon opened his eyes Sheppard had been sitting in the visitor’s chair beside his bed, reading a book, nothing in his face or posture saying ‘hey, I just kissed you’. It was possible Ronon had imagined it.)

Claire applied the second dressing and gave Ronon a long list of aftercare instructions, emphasizing the need for regular cleaning with special soap and no sexual contact while the wounds were still healing. It all seemed excessive to Ronon, given that he’d regularly performed minor surgery on himself with nothing more than a sharp knife and running water, but he nodded politely and gave the list to McKay to keep him entertained.

Ronon put his shirt back on, feeling only a slight discomfort as the material brushed against the dressings, and they went back to the front of the shop, paid, and left. The sun was still shining as they walked out onto the street. Waiting included, the whole thing had taken about forty minutes.

“You should go to the infirmary tomorrow and pick up antibacterial soap and saline solution,” said McKay, reading the list as they walked along. “And painkillers, if you want them.”

A short, slim, dark-skinned man walking past smiled at them. Ronon was feeling in a good mood, so he didn’t scowl back.

“Do you think she thought we were a couple?” asked McKay.

“No,” said Ronon, and he cheerfully cuffed McKay round the back of the head.


	2. Chapter 2

Because he had nothing else to do, Ronon did follow the aftercare instructions. He went to the infirmary and picked up special soap and saline solution, and he washed, soaked and dried his nipples every morning and evening. He’d never taken so much trouble over such small wounds before.

Ronon found that he liked the process - liked the careful ritual of it, liked the fact he only got to look at the tiny silver bars twice a day, half-buried as they were in the pink swollen flesh around them. It made them feel precious, a secret hidden from him and everyone else.

Not surprisingly, Teyla was the first to notice. Ronon was hanging out in her and Kanaan’s quarters, listening to Teyla air her frustrations about the IOA while she bathed Torren and Kanaan cooked. 

“I talk,” said Teyla, carefully wiping away the soap between Torren’s toes, “and Mr Woolsey talks, and they nod and seem to listen, and they go away and talk among themselves, and the next day we start again. There is a great deal of talking, and most of it is taking place behind doors that are closed, at least to me.”

“That sucks.”

“I am a little frustrated,” admitted Teyla as she switched feet. Torren gurgled happily and kicked his free leg in the air.

“I could stun them. Then they’d have to listen.”

Ronon could tell how bad things were by the fact that Teyla _actually considered it_ , putting her head on one side before regretfully shaking her head. “Thank you, but no. I believe that would create more problems than it would solve.” 

A particular vigorous kick from Torren splashed water over Ronon’s front, soaking his shirt. He pulled it off, draped it over the back of his chair, and looked up to find Teyla staring at his chest.

“Piercings,” said Ronon. 

“I see,” said Teyla, still staring. “May I take a closer look?”

Ronon shrugged and waited bare-chested while Teyla plucked Torren from the water and dried him. No-one else had seen his piercings since the day he’d had them done - he felt proud, and a little nervous of Teyla’s reaction.

Teyla looked fascinated. She leaned in close to look at them and touched one lightly with the tip of her index finger. “Are they uncomfortable?”

“No,” said Ronon automatically, then, because this was Teyla, he decided to be honest. “A little. They’re still healing.” His nipples had grown erect in the cool air of the room. He thought he could feel the metal weight of the piercings; it was strange but not unpleasant.

“Hm,” said Teyla, biting her lip. If Ronon had to guess, he’d have said that she wanted desperately to take advantage of this information during one of their sparring sessions, but had remembered that they’d ruled nipples off-limits while she was breast-feeding.

Kanaan wandered into the room, stirring spoon in hand. “What are we looking at?”

“Ronon has had his nipples pierced.”

“Ah,” said Kanaan, looking at Ronon’s chest. “They are very nice.”

Ronon preened.

“Dinner is ready.”

Ronon scrambled to his feet.

..

As much as Ronon liked his shiny new piercings, they didn’t solve the problem that he was bored. He couldn’t help McKay with his wormhole drive, he couldn’t leave the city by himself, he didn’t have the patience to help Teyla with talking to politicians, and he’d volunteered to join one of the Earth gate teams soon after they’d arrived but the SGC still hadn’t got back to him.

Ronon thought about it for a while, then badgered McKay into sending an email to Teal’c for him and wound up with a two week assignment to the SGC as a civilian expert on the Pegasus galaxy.

…

Being an expert apparently meant talking so much that Ronon nearly lost his voice. He spent one day telling a roomful of soldiers everything he knew about the Wraith, one morning going over the basics of the Satedan language with Daniel Jackson, and three full days with a group of anthropologists who wanted to know everything he could tell them about Satedan customs and beliefs. Ronon did his best to answer their questions but he’d been seventeen when the planet was destroyed and before that had spent most of his adolescence in military training; there was a lot about the way his people lived that he hadn’t had the chance to find out. 

Ronon felt kind of bad for the anthropologists.

The rest of the time Ronon sat in the office they’d given him and answered questions from whoever dropped in - a handful at the beginning, more after he’d been there a couple of days. The weirdest thing was that they all knew who he was, from the reports that Sheppard and the others had been filing since Ronon arrived on Atlantis. Even in the mess people clearly recognised him, and whispered among themselves.

“You’re a celebrity,” said Sheppard as he popped open a can of beer with a hiss. They were hanging out in one of the rec rooms for what Sheppard had insisted putting on Ronon’s calendar as ‘an evening of cultural exchange’ (watching Earth sports and eating take-out). 

“I don’t like it.” 

“They’ll get over it.”

Ronon watched the large padded men fighting on the ice. “This is a good game,” he said, gesturing at the TV screen with his chopsticks.

“Thought you’d approve.”

They ate in companionable silence. Ronon had talked plenty already that day and Sheppard looked starving. The SGC seemed to be keeping him busy with missions and meetings, so busy that he hardly had time to eat.

“They need to be able to justify keeping me off Atlantis while they’re deciding what to do with her,” said Sheppard when Ronon asked him about it.

“What?”

“Not just me. Lorne, Carson, Dr Kusanagi too - everyone with a strong enough gene to operate the chair.” Sheppard stabbed a spring roll with his fork. “It’s not personal. I mean, we did break out of the SGC, disobey orders and steal the city before, so. We’ve got form.”

Ronon thought about that while he ate his noodles. “Is that why they don’t want me on one of the gate teams?”

“Hm? Oh no, that’s just them being asses. They don’t really like having civilians on the teams if they can help it - yes, I _know_ you’re not really a civilian, but in their eyes you are. McKay can’t get out in the field either. And I don’t really have that much clout here - believe me, if I could pick my team, you’d be the first person I chose.”

“Okay.”

“Unofficially though, I think you’ve made some friends this week, so wait and see.” Sheppard drained his beer, tilting his head back and closing his eyes as he did so. His eyelashes were dark against his cheek. The stubble on his chin spread down over his jaw and halfway down his throat, covering the sharp jut of his Adam’s apple with short, sharp hairs that glinted in the light. Ronon watched it bob as Sheppard swallowed.

When Ronon had first come to Atlantis, whether he was attracted to people or they to him had been completely irrelevant; he classified them by whether or not they were potential threats, useful, or trustworthy. (The last category was just Sheppard to start with. Then Teyla, Elizabeth, and eventually, to his own surprise, McKay.) For a long time, that was enough. Then Keller had showed up one day on the Daedalus, and for the first time in years Ronon’s first reaction hadn’t been a threat assessment but to notice that she had a nice smile.

A few weeks earlier, while Atlantis was still in the Pegasus galaxy, he and Sheppard had gone camping on the Atantis mainland, just the two of them hunting and swimming and taking turns on Sheppard’s surfboard. At the time Ronon had assumed Sheppard had suggested it to take his mind off Keller and McKay’s trip to Earth, which was fine by him; now he wondered if Sheppard had been trying to make a move on him. Sheppard hadn’t said anything, though - he’d just swum naked and taught Ronon to surf and smiled a lot. He looked good naked – relaxed, as if his clothes were heavy and he felt lighter without them. 

The thought occurred to Ronon that Sheppard had a nice smile too.

They’d built a bonfire on the beach at the end of every day and cooked the food they’d caught as the sun went down, the smell of roasting meat mingling with the salt smell of the ocean. Sheppard had managed to get hold of a crate of beer which they’d sunk in a nearby rock pool to keep cold, and after they’d eaten their fill they’d sat by the fire drinking their sea-cooled beers and talking. When the stars came out they’d put out the fire, unrolled their sleeping bags and slept right there on the sand around the still warm embers. Each night Ronon had fallen asleep to the quiet roar of the sea and the sound of Sheppard’s slow, steady breathing.

Sheppard’s eyes were still closed; the empty can dangled loosely from his hand. A faint whistling snore emerged from his general direction.

Ronon plucked the can from Sheppard’s hand and set it down. Then, almost as an afterthought, he stole the last of the noodles.


	3. Chapter 3

When his two weeks were up, Ronon went back to Atlantis. McKay went to visit his sister soon after Ronon got back, leaving with two laptops and a martyred expression on his face as if he was being sent to face his death (which might actually have been true, given that McKay had apparently managed to be back on Earth for a month before remembering to call her).

Ronon was still standing on the pier, watching McKay’s jumper wobble slowly upwards into the clear blue sky, when another jumper shimmered into existence beside him and Sheppard waved at him through the window, grinning broadly.

“Took your time,” said Ronon when Sheppard walked out the back of the jumper. His blood sang, buzzing with excitement, and at the same time his head felt calm and clearer than it had in weeks. 

“Nice to see you too,” said Sheppard. He bent down, patted the pier and yelled, “Honey, I’m home!”

 

…

As well as his battered black duffel bag, Sheppard had eight large shopping bags and four crates of beer stashed in the back of the jumper.

“How much are you planning to drink?” asked Ronon, eyeing the crates.

“Thought I’d take the opportunity to stock up.” Sheppard hefted one crate up on his shoulder and grabbed a bag with his free hand. “Feel free to help any time.”

It took them three trips to get everything into Sheppard’s quarters. Sheppard was quiet at first, but by the third trip he was sweaty and complaining about the SGC.

“It’s just such _bullshit_ ,” said Sheppard as he punched in the transporter coordinates. “It’s all politics, and I suck at it. And they don’t trust me – you know I only got permission to visit because Rodney and Teyla aren’t here? They think I can’t leave without Rodney and I won’t leave without Teyla. Which I wouldn’t, but that’s not the point.”

Ronon shifted his grip on the crate he was carrying. “You think they’re going to try to keep Atlantis on Earth?”

“Some of them, yeah. The rest are just slow about making decisions and don’t want us getting impatient.” They stepped out the transporter and lugged their loads down the corridor to Sheppard’s quarters, where Sheppard’s stuff was still scattered around like it was before they landed on Earth – surfboard, guitar, rumpled bed. Even his enormous paperback book was still sitting on the nightstand, like a flag planted in the sand: ‘John Sheppard Lives Here’. It was a comforting sight. Ronon found himself glancing at it every so often, as if his eyes needed reassuring that it was still there.

Sheppard dropped the last bag on the floor before flopping down on the couch. “Good work, team.”

Ronon smacked Sheppard’s outstretched hand in response and went to investigate the goodies he’d brought. 

Eventually Sheppard roused himself enough to sit up. “So,” he said, wincing as he stretched his arms above his head. “I was thinking. You should see some of Earth while you’re here – the good bits, not just military bases. Do you want to take a trip somewhere?”

“Sure. Wherever you think is good.” Ronon thought about it for a minute. “Or that island – the one with the big lizards?”

“The big – ah, no, sorry. Jurassic Park wasn’t a documentary. The dinosaurs were fake.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, we could probably go to a tropical island if you want, maybe even the one where they filmed-“

“Don’t worry about it.” Ronon flopped down onto the couch beside Sheppard and laced his hands behind his head, thinking. The wind outside had whipped the sea’s surface into white foam, like fragments of cloud.

“How about a souvenir? Is there anything you’d like to take back?”

Ronon thought for a moment before shaking his head. “I’ve already got one,” he explained, and he lifted up his shirt with one hand.

Sheppard lazily rolled his head round to look and paused when he saw Ronon’s chest, his eyebrows shooting up. “Huh,” he said eventually in a strangled voice before clearing his throat. “That’s – huh. How did that happen?”

“Shop in San Francisco,” said Ronon, not dropping his shirt, his eyes fixed on Sheppard. “McKay took me.”

“He did, did he.” 

“It was my idea.”

“That part does not surprise me.”

Sheppard wrenched his gaze away with visible reluctance. Ronon could see his fingers twitch in aborted movement against the thick black cotton of his jeans-covered thigh.

“You can touch if you like,” said Ronon.

Sheppard made a peculiar coughing sound, as if he’d just choked on air.

“If you want.”

Sheppard chewed on his lower lip for a moment. Then he stretched out his hand and brushed Ronon’s right nipple lightly with his fingertips before circling it with the pad of his thumb – light, deliberate, exploratory.

Ronon breathed slowly in and even more slowly out through his nose. He could feel his nipple rising into a sharp peak, even as his cock stiffened in sympathy within the confines of his pants. The air between them felt thick.

“Are you allowed to have sex with men?” Ronon asked.

Circle, press, circle, squeeze – fingers brushing the hair on his chest, the curve of his pecs, the necklace dangling in the centre of his chest. “As long as I don’t get caught.” 

“How about dating?”

Sheppard held out his free hand and tipped it from side to side, the other thumb still following its circuit round the swollen nub of Ronon’s nipple. “Trickier.” He paused. “How about you? What were the rules back home?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, ok, good point,” said Sheppard nonsensically, and he leaned in and kissed Ronon. His mouth was soft and hot, his chin bristly, and the pulse in his neck raced under Ronon’s hand.

“Take this off,” muttered Sheppard, one hand tugging at the hem of Ronon’s shirt where it was rucked up under his arms.

Ronon obliged, throwing his shirt behind the sofa and flexing a little, showing off.

“Still can’t believe you went out and got your nipples pierced,” said Sheppard, running his hands across Ronon’s chest, making goose-bumps rise up Ronon’s arms. “They look good, by the way. Are they sore?”

“No.”

“Good,” said Sheppard, and he bent his head and took Ronon’s right nipple into his mouth.

Ronon swore and let his head fall back against the couch cushions as Sheppard sucked gently. It felt like there was a direct link between his nipple and his cock, that the piercing had joined them. He could feel himself getting even harder, his cock straining the fabric of his pants, arousal throbbing up his spine. He let his legs fall further apart.

“Yeah,” murmured Sheppard, pulling away from Ronon’s nipple for a moment, and he pawed roughly at Ronon’s erection through his pants before fumbling with the fastening.

Ronon reached down and helped, pushing his pants and underwear down his thighs, and in a moment his cock was in Sheppard’s hand. It stood proud and upright and wanting, his desire unambiguously on display. He’d been unclothed in front of Sheppard dozens, hundreds of times, but this was the first time he’d felt naked.

“Nice.”

“Thanks.” Ronon snaked one hand under the hem of Sheppard’s t-shirt and groped clumsily. 

“Hang on.” Sheppard let go and pulled his t-shirt over his head, then unbuttoned his pants and shoved them down to his ankles, underwear and all, until he was sitting on the couch bare-ass naked, his cock hard and purple and curved against his stomach. “Alright, let’s go.”

Grabbing hold of Sheppard’s dick seemed to be the thing to do, so Ronon did that. It was warm and heavy and twitched in his hand. He could taste salt in the air.

Sheppard groaned. “Yeah, like that.”

Ronon didn’t have much experience with this but it didn’t seem like he had to do much. Sheppard was doing all the work – thrusting into Ronon’s hand, jerking Ronon off, sticking his tongue in Ronon’s mouth like he was fucking it, which made Ronon spread his legs some more and wrap his free arm tightly round Sheppard’s shoulders. Even Sheppard’s cock was working hard, leaking all over Ronon’s hand, making it slick and easy. 

Sheppard shook when he came, all over Ronon’s hand and leg, with his face buried in Ronon’s neck. “Fuck,” he said shakily when he eventually surfaced. “That was …” He laughed and scrubbed one hand over his face. His lips were pink and swollen, so Ronon kissed them.

It was a soft, sweet kiss, unhurried and gentle, and when Sheppard squeezed his cock he came, easy as falling. Toes curling, hips bucking, Ronon clutched Sheppard’s head to his chest, startled by the overwhelming pleasure of it, until it was done and he was left warm and sated.

“I take it that was good for you,” said Sheppard, somewhat muffled from being held against Ronon’s chest.

Ronon petted Sheppard’s coarse, thick hair, pushing against the grain until Sheppard made a noise of protest. Ronon was warm and pleasantly sticky. His skin hummed. 

Eventually Ronon released Sheppard but he didn’t go far, just wriggled round and flopped back down so that his head was in Ronon’s lap. Then he raised his head, looked round, reached down, grabbed his t-shirt off the floor, wiped his hand off and made a vague swipe at Ronon’s before settling back down.

“We have contingency plans,” said Sheppard eventually, so quietly that Ronon almost couldn’t make out the words. “If we have to, we’ll take Atlantis back by ourselves.”

“Okay.”

“We go now, we lose Earth as an ally - no back-up, no Daedalus, and they’d come after us eventually. It’s worth waiting a few months to do this the smart way if we can. And we’ve got people on our side - O’Neill, Carter, Landry. It just takes time.”

Ronon nodded and stroked Sheppard’s chest. The pattern of hair was uneven and interesting; he followed the whorls and loops with his fingertips, traced the thin line of dark hair down over his stomach until it reached the wiry tangle of Shepard’s pubic hair.

“I just didn’t want you to think-“

“I trust you.”

“Okay,” said Sheppard. He nodded to himself. “So, we should go to Hawaii. You’ll like it. The surfing’s great. I’ll buy you a whole roast pig.”

“Sounds good.” The sea was calmer now, bright blue and rippling like an active gate, and Ronon had a sudden urge to go swimming – to dive and swim and float, borne up by saltwater, with the sun shining on his face and Sheppard paddling his board nearby. 

“We might have to wait a few days-“

“I can wait,” said Ronon.

**Author's Note:**

> Written somewhat belatedly for the 'nippleplay' square on my [ season of kink](http://seasonofkink.dreamwidth.org/8345.html) bingo card. 
> 
> Many thanks to mific for kind and helpful beta comments!


End file.
